Exploring Landscape in-the-Making: A Case Study on the Constitutive Role of Animals in Society–Nature Interactions

Abstract

Landscape research offers fruitful perspectives on interactions between society and nature. We suggest that animals may help us to understand these interactions in their full complexity. We examine the constitutive role of animals in society–nature interactions through a case study of brown bears entering a semi-urban landscape of second homes in south-eastern Finland, and developing a garbage-eating habit. Drawing from relational thinking and poststructuralist geographies, we analyse the landscape as co-produced by humans and bears. Analysis of the material and socio-cultural practices of cohabitation enriches the understanding of society–nature interactions by emphasising the open-endedness of the interactions. Therefore, the identification of the underlying material interactions makes visible alternative ways of living the landscape and provides means to evaluate spatial strategies with which problematic society–nature interactions can be manipulated.

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